


A little night burglaring music

by StrictlyNoFrills



Series: In each and every time, a destiny [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Female Bilbo Baggins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-25 02:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21349027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrictlyNoFrills/pseuds/StrictlyNoFrills
Summary: “You look a little too young to be an assassin. So you must be a burglar.”“I beg your pardon?”
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Fíli, FemBilbo/Fili
Series: In each and every time, a destiny [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1539019
Comments: 25
Kudos: 127





	A little night burglaring music

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cheshire1994Cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheshire1994Cat/gifts).

> So, I thought I was quite finished with this ‘verse, and then a very sweet reader asked if I might expand upon one of the scenes in _As I lay me down_. At first I was quite stunned- I honestly didn’t think anyone would enjoy my odd little fic enough to want to read more. Then I was hesitant, because my muse is a fickle thing. But the more we talked, the more the ideas began to take shape. So, Cheshire1994Cat, this one’s for you. Thank you. :)

“Do you think you can handle it from here, lass? Only, I’d best not be caught on campus grounds,” Nori said, glancing cagily about at the front entrance to Esgaroth University. He was probably right. He’d told her once of the hijinks which had gotten him thrown out of the school, and his record had only grown more checkered after.

Bilbo nodded and waved him off, ignoring how she wobbled on her liquor-laden legs. Her large feet went a long way to keeping her from planting face-first in the dirt, which she thought was quite nice of them.

“Go on with you,” she ordered airily - or was that drunkenly? It was difficult to say at this point.

She watched as her not-at-all reformed bartender friend melted into the shadows and then looked left and right. Which way were the Little Folk dorms again?

Squinting, her gaze landed on a series of what appeared to be small caves dotting the landscape to the right, and she grinned, tottering off, remembering now that the buildings for the men and elves were on the left.

As she went, she recalled one of the drinking songs she and the lads at Bifur’s inn had sung earlier that night, before Nori, Bifur’s bartender, who was far more honorable than his status as an unreformed ex-con would lead others to believe, called an end to their drinking competition and closed down the bar for the night. There were students who needed to get back to their dorms, and patrons already in their rooms trying to sleep, after all.

Nori had taken her arm and escorted her, both as thanks for the money her drinking exploits had netted him this night, and in an effort to keep her from doing herself an injury, thus earning Nori Bifur’s ire. Bifur, the kindly dwarf who had taken a nasty bit of shrapnel to the head during the last war with the orcs, had seen Bilbo wandering about the little suburb of Dale which was just outside the university on her first weekend in this part of the world, and taken a shine to her. He’d led her back to the inn and had Nori translate for them, and Bilbo had been a staple at the bar every Friday night since.

She smiled happily as she thought of her linguistically challenged friend, and hummed a particularly naughty verse to herself as she swiped her campus badge into the card reader of her dorm hall. She opened the heavy oak door and began to make her way down the corridor. A few of the dams, none of whom she recognized, paused in passing her by to give her odd looks, but she simply waved and continued on her way. She could not know everyone, after all, and many of the dams preferred to stay out of her way.

It occurred to her, as she began to sing some silly lad’s ode to a barmaid’s bountiful bosoms, that the corridor did not look quite right. She dismissed the notion as a side-effect of too much ale and continued on.

Upon reaching her room number, she reached into her jean pocket to pull out her keys and found nothing but a packet of crackers from the inn. She checked all of her other pockets- twice. 

Well, there was nothing for it, she determined, and began to take out the lock-picking tools Nori had gifted her when she fell prey to the pranking of her dorm mates the first time the dams in her dorm chose to get up to a bit of mischief and changed the lock on her door. 

Bilbo had swiftly found that the dams in her dorm, and indeed the rest of her yearmates, did not appreciate having a hobbit lass on scholarship at their esteemed eastern institution, throwing the grading curve in the two freshmen courses the school had not allowed her to test out of, and they liked to express their displeasure in a variety of ways.

She would appreciate their bouts of pranking more had they not always been targeted at her. She had promptly put Nori’s lessons in lock-picking to good use by breaking into the other dorms and switching out all the shampoo and conditioner with green hair dye - including her own, so that no one could point to her as the culprit. The shrieking had been well worth spending a little time with lime green curls, instead of her usual deep reddish brown color. It had washed out after a few baths, so she honestly wasn’t sure what all the fuss had been about.

She raised her voice to better irk her sore neighbors and began to insert her tools carefully into the lock.

It was not until the door opened of its own accord and brought her face to- well, chest, and a very finely formed and bare one at that - that she realized she might have made a bit of an error in judgment.

She peered up into a pair of beautiful blue eyes framed by raised eyebrows.

“You look a little too young to be an assassin,” Blue Eyes, who looked oddly familiar, announced. “So you must be a burglar.”

Her own eyebrows scrunched up, along with her ears and nose. “I beg your pardon?” she said, or tried to. It all came out rather mushed from her slightly numb lips and tongue.

Blue Eyes laughed at her, though his smile was kind. “Yes, I suspect you do. Wait here, little burglar. I’ll be right back.”

He stepped away to grab a shirt and coat and to slip some boots on over his socks. His dark blue and white striped pajama bottoms he left alone. When he returned, he took her arm gently and then closed and locked the door behind himself, because of course _he_ had a key.

Then he eyed her tools and said, “Ah. Best let me keep these safe until we get you wherever you belong,” before relieving her of them and slipping them into a jacket pocket. He took her arm again and then knocked on the doors on either side of his. They both opened at once, to reveal two burly young dwarves. 

Blue Eyes looked at his fellow dwarves wryly. “Truly, you two are a credit to Dwalin’s training.”

The two dwarves eyed each other in confusion and then looked at Bilbo. “Sire,” one of them yelped, “you know you’re not to bring guests back to the dorms before we clear them!”

Bilbo felt the bottom of her stomach drop out. Blue Eyes, whom she had apparently half remembered from various press conferences and newspaper articles she’d seen, was the Crown Prince of Erebor. She had known, in a vague, uninterested way, that the Crown Prince was a student here, but he was a senior, and studying political science and Ereborean Law, and so Bilbo had never expected for their paths to cross. And now he had caught her in the act of picking the lock on his dorm room door. Her cheeks heated, and she felt a bit faint, and this time, it had absolutely nothing to do with the ale.

The prince rolled his eyes. “She isn’t a guest, Gorm. She’s just lost.” He looked down at her. “Where are you supposed to be, Miss?”

“The freshman dorms for dams,” she said faintly. “I thought I’d made it to my dorm, but I must have gotten a bit turned around.” The shock of hearing Gorm call Blue Eyes “sire” had gone a long way to sobering her up, making her speech crisp and clear. She leaned in close and asked lowly, “Am I going to jail?”

“Not this time, little burglar,” the Crown Prince murmured back. Aloud, he said, “Let’s escort the lady back to her dorm.”

She felt a mixture of gratitude and panic. She still did not have her key. What if he thought she was lying and had her hauled off after all? “We’ll have to ask the R.A. for help. I’ve lost my key.”

He considered her and then asked, “May I see your badge, please?”

She dug out her badge, complete with her full name and the horrid ID photo that made her look like a scraggly young tween, and handed it over. He accepted the badge, studied her name and the photo, eyeing her in amused sympathy, and then passed it back. “I’m sure talking to the R.A. will not be a problem. Come along now, Belladonna.”

“Bilbo,” she corrected, prompted by a lifelong habit. “Belladonna was my mother. It got confusing.”

The way he looked at her told her that he had noted her use of past tense, but he was kind enough not to mention it. Instead, he pressed his hand protectively at the small of her back and began leading her through the corridor. Gorm and The Other Guard flanked them on either side, and Bilbo felt distinctly odd being escorted by the Crown Prince of Erebor and his bodyguards.

“You have a lovely singing voice, Bilbo,” the Crown Prince complimented her, likely trying to distract her from her obvious disconcertion. “And I cannot fault you for your choice of tunes. That particular drinking song is one of my little brother’s favorites.”

“Is it, your highness?” Bilbo asked stiltedly.

“Call me Fili, please,” he invited. “I have a feeling you and I are going to be great friends.”

“Friends? Us?” Perhaps she had passed out after drinking all the men, elves, and dwarves under the table tonight, and this was all some strange dream. Orphaned hobbit lasses did not become friends with dwarven princes after being caught breaking into their dorms. It simply defied the natural order of things.

“That is, if you’ll have me, of course.”

“Oh, I’d have you,” Bilbo blurted before shutting her eyes in abject mortification. “As a _friend_. I would like to have you as a friend.”

Fili grinned at her broadly. “We can discuss anything else you might have meant tomorrow morning, over coffee, after you’ve had a chance to sleep tonight off.”

“Tomorrow morning? Right. Where?”

“Will the student cafe suit? I’m not really supposed to leave the campus without a full security detail,” Fili explained, his tone slightly apologetic. 

She breathed a sigh of relief. Bifur gave her a steep discount - he insisted it was the student discount, though she knew better - but after celebrating the end of midterms tonight, the student cafe was about all Bilbo could afford.

“Works for me,” she said, and Fili grinned at her again, relieved.

“Lovely.” He turned away to speak to someone, and Bilbo realized with a start that they had reached her dorm hall, and the dam behind the counter Fili was addressing was Rena, her R.A.

Rena was all too happy to help someone in the company of the Crown Prince, whereas normally she dealt with Bilbo’s frequent misadventures with a bit of a long-suffering air.

Strictly speaking, dwarves were not allowed in the dam dorms, but Rena let Fili and his bodyguards accompany them as she led the way toward Bilbo’s dorm room, master key in hand. She unlocked the door and gestured for Bilbo to head on inside.

“Go on, then, Bilbo. I’ll see his Highness out.”

Bilbo nodded and began to scurry past her into her room before she stopped and cried, “Wait! Tomorrow, what time are we-“

She glanced at Rena, wondering if she should be advertising her -what? meeting? with the Crown Prince, and then realized that come tomorrow, it would be all over campus regardless. Oh, dear. She didn’t quite know what to think about that.

“How does 10:00 sound?” Fili asked easily.

“Great,” she replied, with far more enthusiasm than was probably warranted.

He didn’t seem to mind, gracing her with another brilliant grin and then nodding decisively. “10:00 am tomorrow it is, then. Sleep well, Bilbo. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“See you then, Fili,” as Rena made a strangled noise, she added, “And thank you for-“ not clapping her in irons and throwing away the key “- you know. Everything. Just- thank you.”

He reached out to take one of her hands in his own and turned it over, neatly slipping her lock picks into her hand in a slight of hand that would have made Nori jealous, as he laid a warm, whiskery kiss upon the back. “It was my pleasure,” he whispered, and then he released her hand slowly. “Goodnight, Bilbo.”

“Goodnight.”

After her door closed, Bilbo stood and stared at it for a while and then went for her phone, putting what she strongly suspected was her first date in her phone calendar, so that she would have proof for herself in the morning. Then she set her alarm for 9:00 am so she would have time to make herself presentable, and set her phone and lock picks on the bedside table.

She collapsed onto her bed with her olive green raincoat, mass of layered sweaters, jeans, and the large, brown duck boots she hated yet had to wear in order to protect her feet from the harsh cold of the east, all still on her person, as she was past the point of caring and completely out of energy to do anything about it. She was out almost as soon as her face collided with her pillow.


End file.
